


Damned and a Queen of Her Own

by alrchive



Category: Red Velvet (K-pop Band)
Genre: F/F, joyrene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-04
Updated: 2020-12-04
Packaged: 2021-03-09 21:00:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,047
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27882638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alrchive/pseuds/alrchive
Summary: Bae Joohyun dies twice in her life, and Sooyoung lives centuries to keep stumbling back into Joohyun. (a.k.a vampire JoyRene)
Relationships: Bae Joohyun | Irene/Park Sooyoung | Joy
Comments: 3
Kudos: 27





	Damned and a Queen of Her Own

**Author's Note:**

> This oneshot is under the Alpas program--a donation drive effort organized for the benefit of the victims of the recent flooding calamities in the Philippines. This story in particular was commissioned by @SoshivelvetM.

Recommended Pre-Reading Listen:  
1\. Forsaken, Disturbed  
2\. Resembling Love (Ballad Version), Seo Jinyoung

Damned and a Queen of Her Own

“Don’t pull the stake out.” 

“Stay back—”

“It’s the only thing keeping you from bleeding to death.”

The night Bae Joohyun met Sooyoung was the same night her father bought a silly painting he wanted to impress his Japanese guests with. It was an odd painting, but he insisted anyway—insisted that the European painter behind the canvass mostly splattered with only two primary colors was part of a movement she could care less about.

She was drawn to the painting however, and that was both undeniable and unforgettable.

It was red—mostly red—and hinted with the tiniest speck of blue at the center. How could she forget? She would not have forgotten no matter how many centuries would pass them by, no matter how many times the stars fall and rise from the horizon in celestial arcs.

And that same night, Bae Manor was bathed in red—red with the anger of the Korean peasants suffering the wrath of Japanese colonizers and the Korean nobility that served them, including Bae Joohyun’s family.

At the cusp of the bloodbath that was slaughtered children, men and women alike, Joohyun, on the brink of life and death, managed to crawl out of a pile that was her father’s guests and the family that never batted an eyelash over her existence.

She had winced at the painful reminder that a stake had been driven through her ribs, then she had cried when she attempted to pull it out. Her pleas to ease the pain were probably loud enough to have summoned the blue-eyed shadow that had shown up calmly walking toward her—a sharp contrast with the chaos of crimson on the walls and the floors that was once pristine and was once her home.

“Don’t pull it out.”

Joohyun remembers her eyes and the air she brought with her. Cold, far too cold for comfort, but she had lived in winter all her life even when her family lived in glamorous summers, so all of it was oddly comforting—

For if death were a woman, death would be blue; death would be red; death would be Sooyoung.

But death gave her a choice:

“Do you wish to live?”

She had been living in death—unnoticed, unloved and cold anyway. 

Joohyun nods, almost begging.

Sooyoung pauses, probably reading the doubt she thought she had noticed, and when she had seen none, she pulled out the stake, bit on the livid veins of her wrist, and feeds the smaller girl with the life dripping out of her skin, both killing Joohyun and giving birth to her anew.

The night Joohyun met Sooyoung, Joohyun both died and had only started living.

//

“Do you regret it?” was the first human question Sooyoung had asked her, a few days after turning her and teaching her how to live after death.

Joohyun was learning how to feed, finding the invigorating satisfaction in leeching off of the life of a man of stature. Sooyoung had a penchant for picking victims who fed not on blood but the hardship of those below him—politicians, dirty ones.

Joohyun’s bigger eyes—dilated, glimmering and green from having her fill of life, teeth very much still on the governor’s neck—darted from her meal to Sooyoung who was calmly sifting through pieces of parchment that were turned trivial in a blink of an eye.

The feeding vampire lets out a sort of giggle, then closes her eyes as she finishes her meal. In the next second, she drops the now lifeless scum unceremoniously, and hums in satisfaction.

Sooyoung smiles in amusement. She points at Joohyun’s lips, beckoning for her to wipe the bloody mess, to which the shorter girl simply shrugs a shoulder at and responds with a nonchalant: 

“It doesn’t bother me.”

It was the first time Sooyoung felt a little doubt with her choices. She had never turned anyone since her birth, even at the death and extinction of her coven. She made an oath—that no one was to turn because of her; that no one was deserving of the power of immortality and strength; that no one was to be lonely like herself. However, Joohyun was the exception—frail, dying, lonely and cold, Joohyun. 

The object of her newfound worries has then busied herself with the pile on the governor’s desk, eyes darting around and finally settling on a document she seems to have found interesting.

“And I don’t regret it—turning, I mean,” Joohyun finally answers, playful glint making her eyes glow underneath the orange lamp. She chortles and shows Sooyoung a piece of paper.

Sooyoung, who was somewhat still in the middle of her doubt-filled thoughts, manages to raise a chin and pay attention to the document that had Joohyun excited so suddenly. It was a business deal with Westerners who wish to establish a brothel of women they would so ignorantly dub ‘exotic’ somewhere in another city.

“Americans?” Sooyoung asks no one in particular despite taking the document herself. 

“Not in particular.”

Sooyoung continues to read through the document made legal by a man in power himself. ‘Irene’ was the name of the brothel, and it was meant for only foreign delegates. Justifications just above the signatures were as disgusting as the men behind it: the delegates would be tired and anxious to be in a country in the east, hence they needed ‘comfort’.

Now, Sooyoung was one to feed on disgusting people of power, but the same glint in Joohyun’s eyes as she waited for the taller girl’s response was suddenly worrying. She never slaughtered people, no matter how disgusting. There was always a discreet and perfect time for it. She had never killed a dozen all at once.

‘How could she have not seen it?’ was the lingering thought, but she fought it anyway and heeded Joohyun’s wishes. She learned that it was impossible for her to say no to Joohyun.

//

Building Irene was faster than the water reserve for the farming peasants in Ansan, and Joohyun was more agitated about it than the alarming effects of the longest hunger strike she had gone on since discovering the brothel at the governor’s office. Sooyoung learned that she hated seeing Joohyun upset.

The western envoys were expected to arrive at Ansan tonight, and the two undead decided to take the opportunity.

“Feed, Joohyun,” Sooyoung goads the shorter girl, nodding her head toward the direction of a thief tailing a mother and a son on their way back to the lit part of the commercial town they had chosen to stay in. “You will need strength.”

Joohyun forces a smile—one, Sooyoung eventually learns, could only be witnessed by her and her alone. “I am fine.”

“You are hungry,” Sooyoung insists. “We cannot have you go berserk because of hunger. You will harm the innocent.”

And when Joohyun didn’t answer, it was then—at that very second—that Sooyoung realized Joohyun did not have plans on keeping herself from going berserk and bloodthirsty that night.

//

‘How could she have not seen it?’

The thought bounced in Sooyoung’s head like a scream down an emptied well as she stared at the massacre before her.

Joohyun did not wait for any of the women to be touched. She had killed and fed on every single man in the brothel that night. In her fear that the women would have been caught in the one-woman ambush, Sooyoung set them free, using the very carriages the foreigners used to get to Ansan. 

When she got back, she was clawing at the image of a frail woman on the brink of death all those nights ago in Bae Manor, crawling for her life, for there was Joohyun—standing, rigid, and powerful as she fed on the last man’s neck that was very much alive and aware that he was being bled to death. His hands flailed and soon would fall limp.

“Joohyun, enough,” Sooyoung firmly commands but it fell on deaf ears.

“Joohyun—I said—” she tries to lay a hand on the smaller vampire, only to be rejected with a harsh shrug of the same shoulder.

She steps closer, wanting to scold Joohyun, but instead she sees her still shaking from the rage she had unleashed. She hates how her voice comes out soft and concerned, “Joohyun, that is enough.”

Finally, Joohyun lets go, leaving the lifeless body of what once was a man glorified by society, and lets him drop on the cold hard wooden Easterner floor. She then turns, shoulders slumping, and head bowed.

Sooyoung takes her by the chin, tips her head to find her crying. She wipes her face free of both blood and tears with calmer hands.

That night, Sooyoung learned that Joohyun despised her life in that manor—despised being nothing but an object to be sold ogled and eventually sold to the Japanese. It planted seeds of sorrow and bitterness in her heart that was to die with her the night she found her, but now it thrived—thrived and flourished into anger and hatred in full bloom.

That night, Joohyun carried the name Irene, marking the night she had set herself free of the thought that she was but a woman in a world made to turn by men.

And that night, Sooyoung learned she was to continue to being blinded by love.

//

Irene and Sooyoung would share many nights for years, and, along with them, a million thoughts. 

Sooyoung tells her vows to the woman who now carried the name Irene—tells her of her lifelong promise to never turn another human into a vampire. She cradled Irene’s head on her chest, running her fingers through her hair.

“I am an exception then,” it wasn’t a question that slipped easily from Irene’s lips. Her fingers crawl teasingly up the taller girl’s arm and finally rests on her temple—the shell that shields the older vampire’s buried doubts.

“Yes,” Sooyoung hated to but nonetheless admitted.

Irene tries so hard to keep her laugh from leaving her mouth. She lets a question free instead, “why did you turn me?”

Sooyoung struggles for a valid answer, but managed to respond simply, “you seemed like you needed life.”

Irene hums, and for a second Sooyoung thinks the smaller woman’s unsatiable soul was finally content—

—only to be bothered by a whisper she had heard louder than the non-existent beat of her heart, “all these gifts and we choose to hide.”

Music as Irene’s voice may be to her ears, the words carried by it was too heavy it would last in form of pain that would last her centuries.

//

Decades, centuries, and finally Irene snaps.

The world had turned and changed, giving better attention to women. Maybe not like how Irene nor Sooyoung wanted, but it had sparked sharper fangs for the shorter of the duo.

It was a night at a bar illuminated by neon hues. Irene was a wonderful singer, and to be given the stage for an hour, people noticed and loved her almost immediately. Her voice was as haunting as the moon worn like a pendant by the midnight sky of the tenth month that year.

The audience were enamored, followed her with their eyes even as she had settled on a bar stool next to Sooyoung. 

Later, Irene lost her patience at some guy persistently asking for a number. The response was gutting, teeth on probably the billionth neck, screaming bar patrons, and statement on the bar wall fashioned by Irene using the very blood she had spilt that night:

‘One scratch on a single woman is blood spilt for a thousand men.’

To their fortune, cameras weren’t on phone yet, and the world had yet to embrace color in full in media. No picture was taken. No trace. 

The only mark there was laid on the heart of Sooyoung, who was on the receiving end of Irene’s sudden spur of irrationality.

“Why did you do that? You could have been documented!”

“But I wasn’t. All there was were a dozen drunk people and a bartender who everybody thinks is crazy.”

“That was too reckless! We could have been known!”

“I am sick of hiding!”

Sooyoung tries to bury the tightness in her chest by catching her breath from all the shouting.

“When I was human I did nothing but hide,” Irene said as she burrows an unfailing and metallic gaze straight into Sooyoung’s soul, “only shown to the world when I needed to be seen or touched by men. Now that I have all the power I still have to hide—”

“Irene—”

“We have to make a difference with what we can do. All the women we could help,” Irene cut her off too quickly, and Sooyoung almost thinks it was sharp enough to cut through her heart as well. She knew where this was headed—centuries of delaying it, it finally lets itself be known.

Irene raises a hand, goading Sooyoung to take it, “come with me, Sooyoung. We can rule the world. No more pain for us.”

‘Us’, women. That was definitely what she meant. Centuries pass and she still thinks she is human—that she is still one among human women.

Sooyoung can never say no to Irene, but a centuries-old vow and a legacy of a coven that has known more and is bigger by principle than two undead women bore more weight.

For the first time, Sooyoung says no to Irene, and that night, Sooyoung learns that a dead heart can feel pain as deep as a bond older than hundreds of decades.

//

It turns out, Irene does not immediately come out of hiding. She timed it well—lets herself get married to a man of power, a rich businessman whose family was just as dismayed as the members of his company’s board.

Of course, one day, his death was announced and no one else, as stated in his will, takes his place apart from his queen. Only then did Irene let herself be known.

Her image was a woman who crossed a thousand boundaries set by man to the public, but Sooyoung knew there was more to it—all those mysterious killings, erased mafias, and missing people.

Sooyoung can say she was relieved. She had tried to move on by living her life as she did without Irene. She tells herself she spent more centuries of that than those she had lived with the only other being she had turned.

Indeed, she was relieved. She expected Irene to make a grander entrance, that maybe she would announce her presence like a warhorn, but she didn’t.

Sooyoung puts down the newspaper she had been reading and stares out the window. This day, she learned that love centuries-old required more than decades to erase.

//

Oh, does Sooyoung feel cold—colder than the remainders of death on her skin, or her unmoving heart.

She would see her everywhere in the nights she walked aimlessly for the world bowed at her beauty the same way she would never admit she would, too.

It turns out, Irene was better as a free bird.

‘How could she have not seen it?’

//

A charity event is when they finally meet again, and it wasn’t destiny like the first time they met. Sooyoung just decided she needed to see Irene.

A painting was apparently for auction, an ages-old painting, and Sooyoung almost smirks at the sight of it. It was the same painting the night she met Joohyun at Bae Manor—entirely red with a glint of blue at the center.

She smirks for she was right. She knew Irene—the elusive CEO—would be here. An event for advocates against domestic violence—oh, the irony.

And there she was:

Clad entirely in white and standing proud. There was a charm to seeing her, too, as she went up the podium, higher than the crowd of men before her, for once upon a time, Sooyoung had found her crawling out of a pile of dead men.

And when she delivers a speech Sooyoung knew she despised giving, they lock gazes a minute into the presentation. Her eyes were different. They didn’t seem as spiteful. She nods, however.

//

Irene sees Sooyoung in her periphery, settles on the very empty space beside her and fills it out easily like they haven’t been apart for decades.

They both quietly stare at the painting that was to be delivered to her company and hung on the lobby as a reminder of her journey.

Sooyoung moves, probably to fix her hair or to cross her arms, and by reflex, Irene’s hand goes to her right, soothing the phantom of pain slithering on the skin that was once hollowed out by a stake all those centuries ago.

“Death’s Mistress,” Sooyoung simple says.

Irene finally turns to look at her for a second.

“Yes, I don’t believe it was called that when my father bought the painting,” Irene answers just as simply. Too simple, so she adds, “I have scoured the earth for this painting.”

Sooyoung hums. “A reminder of that night?”

“Of many things,” she turns with finality to her this time, “most especially the begging blue at the center.”

How could she forget? That night, Sooyoung’s eyes bore the glint of hope she had been striving for as a human.

“I learned many things since that night,” Sooyoung says with a smile, implying a hundred unwritten letters.

“So did I.”

Sooyoung returns a nod. “Do you regret it?”

Irene scoffs at the familiar question, then shrugs a shoulder. “I did a thousand things in this life without a single regret—”

‘Predictable’ is what Sooyoung thinks.

“—but your absence was louder than the peace of retribution.”

Sooyoung finally laughs; after decades of pining, she finally feels, “how can your people not think you archaic when you speak like this?”

They have a good laugh at each other’s stories for a hours, bringing the reconnection of bonds all the way to Irene’s penthouse living room over a glass of wine.

That night, Irene learns that Joohyun was now a good name to return to.


End file.
